different between meme vs snowclone

English

Etymology

Coined by British biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. Shortened (after gene) from mimeme (compare English phoneme), from Ancient Greek ????? (mîmos, “imitation, copy”). The concept was later applied to the Internet by Mike Godwin.

Pronunciation

• enPR: m?m, IPA^(key): /mi?m/
• Rhymes: -i?m

Noun

meme (plural memes)

1. Any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes.

   Synonym: culturgen

   • 1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene:

     Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.

   • 2002, Rita Carter, Exploring Consciousness, p. 242:

     Related memes tend to form mutually supporting meme-complexes such as religions, political ideologies, scientific theories, and New Age dogmas.
2. (Internet) Media, usually humorous, which is copied and circulated online with slight adaptations, including quizzes, basic pictures, video templates etc. [from 1993]
   • 2012, Greg Jarboe, You Tube and Video Marketing, 2nd edition:

     The idea was to append Keyboard Cat to the end of a blooper video to "play" that person offstage after a mistake or gaffe, like getting the hook in the days of vaudeville. The meme became popular, Ashton Kutcher tweeted about it to more than 1 million followers, and more than 4,000 such videos have now been made.
3. (Internet, slang) A myth circulating as truth, such as ineffective practices presented as effective.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• email forward
• replicator

Verb

meme (third-person singular simple present memes, present participle meming or memeing, simple past and past participle memed)

1. (transitive, rare, Internet slang) To turn into a meme; to use a meme, especially to achieve a goal in real life.
2. (intransitive, Internet slang) To create and use humorous memes.
3. (intransitive, Internet slang) To joke around.

   I thought you guys were just meming.

Further reading

• meme on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Internet meme on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

Anagrams

• meem

Cebuano

Etymology 1

Onomatopoeic.

Verb

meme

1. (childish) to sleep

Etymology 2

Borrowed from English meme.

Noun

meme

1. a meme

Danish

Noun

meme

1. meme
   • 2019, Stine Bødker, Klar til kærlighed, Gyldendal A/S (?ISBN)

     Hvis du lige har taget et fint billede og fundet på en sjov caption, så hav det klar til at dele, kort efter I bliver venner, så du er sikker på, at han ser det. Tag ham i et sjovt meme eller et billede af noget, som I har talt om. Det er en ret low-key måde  ...

   • 2019, Andreas von der Recke, Jacob Harlev, Mikkel Sandal Hansen, Patrick Walther Thomsen, #Youngster: 5 dogmer til at tiltrække og fastholde millennials, BoD – Books on Demand (?ISBN), page 19:

     Hvis det ikke var for ham, kunne vi nok skrive 2018 på denne bogs udgivelsesdato. Hvis du kan finde et godt meme (Google billeder: memes) at åbne samtalen med Mikkel på, har du vundet hans hjerte. Men han respekterer kun dem, der kan ...

Indonesian

Etymology

Borrowed from English meme.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mémé/

Noun

meme (plural meme-meme, first-person possessive memeku, second-person possessive mememu, third-person possessive memenya)

1. meme

References

• “meme” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) Daring, Jakarta: Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Republik Indonesia, 2016.

Italian

Noun

meme m (plural memi)

1. (protoscience) meme

Kongo

Noun

meme (singular meme, singular dimeme, plural mameme)

1. sheep

Mandarin

Romanization

meme (Zhuyin ??? ???)

1. Pinyin transcription of ??

Northern Ohlone

Verb

meme

1. (Ramaytush dialect) kill

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English meme.

Pronunciation

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /?me.mi/

Noun

meme m (plural memes)

1. meme (unit of cultural information)
2. (Internet) meme (humorous image, video or other media shared in the Internet)

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowing from English meme.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?meme/, [?me.me]

Noun

meme m (plural memes)

1. meme (unit of cultural information)
2. meme (Internet slang)

Tok Pisin

Etymology

Reduplication of English meh (onomatopoeia for the sound a goat makes)

Noun

meme

1. goat

Turkish

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)Compare Azerbaijani m?m?, Turkmen määme.

Noun

meme (definite accusative memeyi, plural memeler)

1. (anatomy) breast

Declension

English

Etymology

Blend of snow cone +? clone, after the popular idea that the Inuit have a large number of words for different types of snow; coined by Glen Whitman in response to Geoffrey Pullum on the blog Language Log.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?sn??.kl??n/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?sno?.klo?n/

Noun

snowclone (plural snowclones)

1. A type of cliché which uses an old idiom formulaically placed in a new context.

   "To fry or not to fry" is a snowclone of the famous quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "To be or not to be".

   • 2005 Nov 5, auuV, "Some articles that I like. They are about language," alt.running.out.of.newsgroup.names, Usenet

     I stumbled upon the site the other day, when I was looking up the origins of the "Im not an X, but I play one on TV" snowclone.

   • 2005 December 3, David Rowan, "Trendsurfing: 'Snowclone' journalism" [1], The Times

     Suddenly snowclone hunters were documenting media usages suggesting that, in space, no one can hear you belch, bitch, blog, speak, squeak or suck.

   • 2006 Jun 20, Michael Erard, "Analyzing Eggcorns and Snowclones, and Challenging Strunk and White", in The New York Times, page F4

     Regular readers learned there first about snowclones, the basic building blocks of cliches, like "X is the new Y" or "you don't need a degree in A to do B."

   • 2006 Jul, Mark Peters, "Not Your Father's Cliché", in Columbia Journalism Review 45(2), page 14

     If so, you're being snowed under by snowclones — a category of fill-in-the-blank cliché identified by linguists.

   • 2006 Nov 18, unknown author, "Snowclone", in New Scientist 192(2578), page 80

     When you read phrases like these in a newspaper, you've stumbled across a particular type of cliché: the snowclone.

Related terms

• catchphrase
• cliché
• meme
• proverb

Translations

See also

• Appendix:English snowclones

References

• 2004 January 16, Geoffrey Pullum, “Snowclones: lexicographical dating to the second”, Language Log

Further reading

• snowclone on Wikipedia.Wikipedia